The mechanism for granting subsidies in agriculture has generated arrears towards farmers, as the approved requests exceed the available funds. The situation was discussed at the meeting of the Parliamentary Commission for the Control of Public Finances, during the examination of the report on the use of resources from the National Fund for the Development of Agriculture and Rural Environment for the years 2023-2024, IPN reports.
During the hearings, it was mentioned that, during the verified period, over 3.1 billion lei were managed through the fund. According to the audit report, although the fund was planned in accordance with budgetary legislation, the lack of a mechanism to correlate eligible requests with available resources caused the state to accumulate annual financial obligations that it cannot cover. The Court of Accounts notes that the distribution of subsidies is done without performance indicators and without an evaluation of the impact of support measures, which affects the efficiency of the use of public money.
In response, representatives of the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Industry stated that the recently approved Strategic Program of Agricultural Policy will no longer allow the accumulation of new arrears. According to them, each call for application submission will be launched within the limit of available financial resources, and eligible applications will be funded only within the allocated budget. The ministry’s representatives specified that the financial obligations accumulated in previous years remain the responsibility of the state and will be gradually honored, depending on the available resources.
Another issue discussed concerned the activity of the Agency for Intervention and Payments for Agriculture. The informational system used for processing applications is outdated and fragmented, which forces employees to manually process a large portion of the data. In addition, the institution is facing a staff shortage, and these problems lead to delays in reviewing the files submitted by farmers and increase the risk of errors or even double funding.
The representatives of AIPA have stated that the institution is working on the development of a new integrated information system, with the support of development partners. According to them, the platform will automate the processing of requests, will allow data exchange with state registries, and will be adapted to the requirements of the Republic of Moldova’s accession process to the European Union.
At the end of the meeting, the members of the Parliamentary Commission for Public Finance Control requested the responsible authorities to periodically present information on the implementation of the recommendations made following the audit, including about the measures taken to reduce arrears in subsidies and accelerate the digitization of processes within AIPA.
